


silver and gold in the firelight shine

by guibass



Category: Journey (Video Game 2012)
Genre: Female Character of Color, Female Protagonist, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 12:52:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4222401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guibass/pseuds/guibass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They flutter in the air, like the wind is pulling them but they are tethered, they cannot escape. But there is no wind, there is no clouds. There is no rain, and there is no one but her and these... wisps. </p><p>Veeran would laugh, call "Sahar! Sahar! Help me catch one!", and if this were years ago and if Veeran were here, she would laugh and join him. She would jump and grab them by their edges to drag them down. But Veeran is not here, there is no laughing, and the wisps do nothing but float aimlessly around her. She no longer has a voice to laugh, and no one to smile at, so she strokes the small wisps that come by her, and carries on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silver and gold in the firelight shine

Sahar chews on the loaf, overworking her jaw to properly break down the dry pieces. This is a rest she cannot afford, and yet takes to quell the way her legs shake and the horizon blurs. All before her is pale gold, present in the sky and the ground. Her bread even reflects the shade. Her eyes narrow as she looks off into the distance, trying to find shapes and colours that are not the endless sea of dunes and gold. The odd grey marking appears, shining silver in the hot desert sun, but besides this marker, she sees what she has already seen before. Before her brother had left her, he used to say the world was like this – and endless expanse of shifting dunes and the thread of a breeze every now and then. The heat was always here, the mountain always looming over them. The only other colours in the world were in their cloaks, their skin, and their eyes. 

They had been on their own for what she guessed had been a few months – it might have been longer or shorter. Veeran had always been better with time. 

She continues to chew, the bread dry and tough from the prolonged stay in her bag. It is her last loaf, the last bit of food she'll have. She regrets not taking the loaves off of Veeran when she had the chance. When he had dropped, she did not know what to do. There was no way for her to start a fire to burn him, nor a way to bury the remains. She did not even want to touch the vessel he had been in. His soul is now lost, as she is now lost. She hopes that he was given to the wind, where he belongs among the rest of their family. She sends a small prayer at the memory of his face. 

Licking her chapped lips, she wraps the remaining pieces of her bread back in its cloth and tucks it away in her sack. Brushing the crumbles off her, she stands. The rest did her well, the horizon is less gold now, more white and she can see the lines of what looks to be ruins in the distance. Carefully, she slides down the dune, only to beginning climbing the next one once she reaches it. It is tiring, her mouth is dry and the small patches of skin around her eyes, that are bare to the elements, burn. 

She makes it over three dunes, there atop the third one, she finally sees the ruins. It is an ocean of the silver markers, small broken buildings scattered around. Her cloak flutters, the wind that rarely comes descends across her. The sand shifts slightly, and the wind is strong enough to give her a slight push forward. She chokes back a small sob, as tears well in her eyes and her hands shake. It must be Jeeda again, always pushing her and Veeran forward. Sahar takes breathes, deep ones that fill her lungs with the ever present hot, still air until she can feel the tears recede. Crying now means less water, means dying a lot sooner than later. 

She looks behind her, the direction she believes she came from. The dark horizon is spreading, she must hurry. Rushing down the dune, she reaches the silver markers and takes a moment to look at them properly. She's never seen so many together – they are usually in groups of two or three whenever she came across them. This is easily a good hundred, all bunches together. She touches a few, the edges of their tops worn down and what inscriptions they had are worn away, the smallest indents here and there. They are all like this, their purpose unknown, The wind picks up again, but this time she knows it cannot be Jeeda or Veeran or even the ancestors. This is the wind of warning, the way it wraps around her legs and tugs at her hood. She glances around the sea of silver, looking for those ruins she spotted earlier. There is a little one not too far from where she stands, and she makes quick steps towards it. 

A second burst of wind washes over the area, moving the sand enough to cover her feet and she can feel her heart hammer now. The top of the ruin is accessible, and there is something... moving there. She has three more warning winds before she should hide, she figures. The wind has been moving from the west, and she can just hop over the side, in a little nook she sees will fit her, to wait out the storm. 

The climb to the top is easy enough, and Sahar doesn't know what to make of what she finds. It is a glyph, one she recognizes from her mother's scarf. It stands, white and shining, and the moving bits of red dance around it. 

Jeeda used to tell tales of the wisps, that in the old days they used to be large and strong, carried caravans and sang. Songs that would reach inside and calm one, give them energy. Jeeda said she used to ride one sometimes, to gather back the cattle when they wandered off, she'd fight with her siblings over who would brush them down at the end of the day. These... these wisps are small, and do not sing, not in the way Jeeda said they would. They do move around, give her enough room to get closer to the glyph. It shines brighter and she reaches her gloved hand towards it and it reaches for her. She feels the light embrace her, and the feeling does match what she thinks Jeeda was trying to get at. A song of lightness, right through you. The wisps, before minding their own business, start to crowd her. Small chirps and whistles echo as they each try to plaster themselves to her. She can feel it, feel a sound trying to escape her throat. The wind now picks up in a way to completes distracts her from these sounds and these wisps. She whips her head to the left and can see it, the storm rolling on over. She is a fool, playing with these little things, for feeling so light. She rushing to the other side of the platform and hops off, dropping a few meters. 

This side of the wall had caved in enough for her to slip in, it is narrow and dark and she can hear the high whistles of the wind. She keeps going down the hole in the wall until the entrance is faint and the whistles even fainter. There is enough room for her to sit and she does, leaning her back against a wall – pieces of the ruin dig into her back but she pays no attention to it. Curling into herself and closing her eyes, she tries to wait out the storm. The red pieces float around her, occasionally chirping, but most of the ones that followed her now curl against her legs, shoulders, and one rests atop her head. She tries to sleep to the sound of the faint wind and the bell-like chirp of the wisps.


End file.
